


Explore That Shore Up Above

by AndreaLyn



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 21:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8176372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: Sure, Cougar’s quiet and all, but ‘cursed by a sea witch’ isn’t the first assumption Jake would’ve jumped to (and apparently he should have).





	

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to [felonazcorp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/felonazcorp/pseuds/felonazcorp) because it's all her fault.

Jake’s first impression of the new guy is _quiet_.

When Jake says ‘quiet’, he doesn’t mean that he rarely speaks or that he’s shy. He _never talks_. It takes Jake a week to figure that out, though, because he fills all the space with his own words. Seven days after he gets back from vacation to find their team has a new sniper, he figures out that the guy just doesn’t talk.

“What’s his deal?” Jake asks Pooch, skipping right over the part where it’s probably rude to ask this.

Pooch shrugs, glancing at where Cougar is unpacking his rifle. “Guy’s got some kind of trauma, Clay says. Besides, we don’t need anyone else talking, Jensen, we got you.”

Even though it’s really weird, Jake gets used to the lack of noise when Cougar’s around. He figures out his body language pretty quickly and it helps that Cougar is pretty damn easy to read. He uses morse code to sign out messages over the comms and everyone just kind of accepts that their sniper doesn’t use words to get along.

No one thinks it’s weird.

It means that none of them are really looking for (or seeing) the irritated looks Cougar keeps throwing all of them, but mainly Jake.

Besides, Pooch is right. Who needs Cougar talking when Jake talks enough for three snipers?

* * *

Sometime around three months, Jake’s fine-tuned Cougar sense starts taking a trip towards the weird, because if he’s not going crazy, he could swear that he’s getting some pretty hefty ‘fuck me’ vibes from Cougar. Jake swears he must be going crazy, because there’s no way that a guy like Cougar Alvarez would be making such overt moves on a hacker like him.

Except that he keeps staring at Jake _all the time_ , plus there’s that thing where he kind of makes a point of sucking on phallic things like popsicles and eating bananas right in front of Jake’s face.

Plus, there’s been a lot of touching.

Eventually, even Pooch starts to notice. “I mean, Jake, I’m just saying, either he wants you to jump him or maybe he’s just lost his mind.”

Jake, in his cautious and idiot glory, decides it must be the latter. And so, month three of Cougar’s time in the Losers goes by and Cougar’s glares in Jake’s direction only get darker.

* * *

It’s six months after Cougar joined them and Jake can’t take it anymore.

He doesn’t think that Cougar’s said a _single word_ and even the sounds he makes aren’t from his own vocal cords. It’s driving Jake crazy because he absolutely needs to know what Cougar sounds like when he’s saying Jake’s name or whispering it or moaning it or, you know, anything. 

This isn’t normal! Why didn’t he figure this out before?

He’s gearing up to shout at Cougar in a truly epic rant, but fate has better ideas. Cougar’s coming out of one of his epically long showers (and seriously, they nearly stretch an hour and Jake’s not convinced he doesn’t do it just to use all the water, but there’s always hot left, so maybe Cougs is a fan of the cold shower), and Jake’s decent enough to wait until he’s changed into a t-shirt and pair of sweats.

Only, Cougar’s cheeks are still flushed from his pre-shower run and his hair is wet. He’s staring at Jake with that weird ‘I want you’ vibe he’s been getting for months and Jake is only so strong, _okay_? So it’s absolutely not his fault that he gives a desperate sound of a choked whimper and hauls Cougar in with his fingers tightening over his shoulders, kissing Cougar for all he’s worth, deciding fuck the consequences.

Lucky, then, that Cougar seems to be on the same page.

Actually, no, Cougar seems to be a few chapters ahead of him given how he’s currently grappling Jake’s shirt and trying to get it off, deepening the kiss to a ridiculously smutty degree that even Jake’s trying to struggle to figure out.

“Wha…I…” he stammers as he eases back, eyes wide. 

“You’re an idiot.”

Those are the first words that he’s ever heard Cougar say and they’re insulting him. “Hey!”

Cougar’s voice is gorgeous. It’s all smoky and sexy, melodic and low with a gruff quality mingling with his accent. Jake’s already decided that he never wants to stop hearing him speak. Except, wait, who waits six months to say something?

Lucky for him, Cougar is plenty eager to fill him in. Cougar’s glaring at him as he shakes his head. “It’s been six months. Six months I’ve known you, six months I’ve been here staring at you, six months I’ve been trying to get you to notice my signals, and you never do. Six months! They tell you when you get your legs that it won’t take long. Other mermaids, they say that it is only a week, maybe two before your love kisses you. Why did I have to be the mermaid who fell in love with an idiot?”

Jake is too busy gaping at Cougar to say anything because he’s never heard him speak so much and beyond that, there’s still that insanely good kiss to consider past all the insanity that Cougar is babbling about mermaids and love and Jake’s not even sure which is the weirdest part of all this.

“You just had to kiss me!” Cougar is pacing back and forth, his breaths huffing out with irritation. “You had one job, Jacob Jensen. One job!”

“Wait, were you creepy stalking me from the ocean and you fell in love with me? Is that why you came onto land? Are ocean snipers a thing? Did you hunt white whales? Wait, how’d you get legs?” Jake actually has a _million_ questions, genuinely, but he can’t figure out which ones he wants the answer to the most. 

“Sea witch,” is all Cougar says, spitting out the words acridly. He’s stopped pacing and his arm is draped around Jake’s neck, not seeming keen to explain things to him with any more depth, which Jake’s totally on board to go with, because currently Cougar is wrapping his legs around Jake’s waist like a tail he’s been missing, trying to aggressively pin him to the wall. “Shut up and kiss me before I yell at you some more for being an idiot.”

“Yeah, but you love me, so it’s all good.”

Cougar glares in that familiar way Jake’s become accustomed to right about the time he turned seven.

“C’mon, fishy fish, just say you love me and…”

Right, yes, good, a kiss definitely is the right way to shut him up.

* * *

It turns out that when Jake had been on leave in New Hampshire and had taken his sister and niece to the beach, Cougar had been out there in the waves, having migrated up from warmer waters. He’d said that Jake’s laugh had been like a siren drawing him in. Cougar had spent hours watching the Jensen family and after, he’s gone back to make a deal with a sea witch because he’d never wanted anything more in the world than to be around Jake. 

That had been when Cougar found out that the whole contract meant that he had to hand over his voice as leverage, but then again, she also hadn’t figured that it would take so long for anyone to kiss someone as handsome as Cougar.

“I thought the same,” Cougar agrees with a snide glare at Jake. “What took you so long?”

Jake feels like this is a pile-on because Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and how the hell was he supposed to know that his teammate was secretly a merman that was waiting to get his voice back from the power of love? He just thought maybe Cougar was weird and stared at Jake with those sexual looks because the closest thing other than him on most missions was Clay, Roque, and Pooch and sometimes, you were just mistaking Clay for a bear, Roque was just a one man travelling knife show, and Pooch…well, okay, so Jake’s lucky that Cougar didn’t develop a thing for Pooch because he’s a pretty great guy.

“So, what, are you on legs forever now?”

Cougar drags him down to the beach and shows Jake that with the right amount of water, his legs give way to the most glorious emerald tail, shining in the sunset. Apparently, the other good part of the kiss-release part of the contract is that Cougar is definitely not locked into any official plan. Jake’s just saying, cell phone companies can learn a lot from underwater sea witches, because Cougar’s contract is looking _pretty sweet_ right now.

He thinks he can be forgiven for practically leaping over the waves to pin Cougar down in the shallows in order to make out with him, because if Cougar’s voice came back with nothing more than a kiss, then Jake absolutely wants to know what a blowjob will do.

* * *

“Wait, where does your dick go when…”

It’s been a week since they’d all found out and Jake hasn’t stopped asking questions since. Roque looks ready to murder someone and even Pooch seems at the end of his rope.

“Cougar,” Clay orders, “can the sea witch take his voice too?”

Cougar eyes Jensen thoughtfully and crosses his legs on the table in front of him. “There are better ways to take away his voice. I know some,” he promises with a wink in Jake’s direction that holds so much incredible promise for the night ahead.


End file.
